Feng Shui Lighting

 

Lighting can greatly enhance the Chi in your home. There are numerous options including incandescent and halogen electric lights, candles, oil lamps, fireplaces and natural light. Improve the Chi flowing through your home by illuminating dark corners, camouflaging sharp angles, and warming gloomy rooms with lighting. Consider leaving low wattage lights in all the time in rooms with no natural light, or consider installing a light tube as in the picture below.  This home office was an interior room in the Career area, which was always dark. The natural light now pouring in has greatly enhanced career energy.

 

Lighting can also be artistic, and be used to balance the elements. Light itself represents the Fire element, but the colors and shapes of the fixtures bring in the other elements. The red hanging lamps in the picture represent 4 of the 5 elements (red – fire, yellow-earth, wavy lines – water, metal – the fixture) they hang above a flower arrangement (wood) creating a 5 element display. The gold glass wall sconce represents earth, water, and fire. It is used to illuminate a long hallway.    See more beautiful hand-blown glass at www.nourot.com.

 

In all cases choose fixtures you love! Collect lamps that add personality to your décor. Let the light that fills your home be a reflection of your taste and creative expression.

Feng Shui Enhanced Kitchens

Kitchens are very important rooms in your home because, in Feng Shui, food symbolizes health and wealth.  The idea behind this is if you are prosperous you have more money to purchase food and stay in good health. Therefore enhancements and locations of kitchens in a home are very important. One of the most auspicious locations is in the Center Area, because kitchens are considered the “hearth” of a home, and the center is the area for centering and grounding. In this location earth tones and ceramics help with enhancement. In other Bagua areas the enhancements need to align with the attributes of that particular sector. (To read more go to Newspaper Columns - Aug. 2011)

For instance some pictures below demonstrate how our kitchen in the Love and Romance area is enhanced with pairs of items, shades of red and pink, and romantic representations.

There are a few other specific enhancements that can be made in all kitchens – no matter where located: 1) Always declutter kitchen countertops. Put away items you don’t regularly use. Make plenty of room for meals to be enjoyably prepared and for the Chi to flow. 2) Keep your knives completely out of sight when not in use (use a drawer knife block rather than one on the counter). 3) If the stove is located next to the kitchen sink, place a healthy plant, flowers, or bowl of fruit between them to represent the wood element, thus balancing the elemental relationship between the sink (water) and stove (fire).

 

Feng Shui's Joyous Lake

In Feng Shui the middle right area of your home is known as the Children and Creativity area; also known in the I Ching as “Joyous Lake.” This is an important area because it’s associated with pleasure, generosity, encouragement and creativity. The essential idea of this teaching is that by encouraging others to fully express themselves; we bring success and pleasure to ourselves. Parents and teachers are energized when they encourage their children to learn and grow through creative expression. This is true of our own creativity; we all need encouragement and admiration from our family and friends so we can blossom into full creative expression. Being supporters and cheerleaders for each other is very important!

This area of your home can be enhanced through whites, pastels, metal items, whimsical art, pictures of children, or items created by children or yourself. This is an excellent spot for children’s rooms or craft rooms. In my home this area is my laundry room, so I have enhanced it by hanging numerous collage frames of pictures of my daughter through the years. I can do laundry and take a trip down memory lane as I watch her grow up. Where is this area in your house?

 

Blue Moon

The beauty and power of the Blue Moon.

Blue Moon - Time for Feng Shui Inner Work

Tonight, August 31, 2012 we will be blessed with a Blue Moon.  The "blue moon" refers to the rare occasions when there are two full moons within the same month. The second full moon is termed the blue moon. This is an extremely rare and powerful moon.  During the entirety of the 20^th Century there were only 40 instances in which a single month contained two full moons. A blue moon literally happens only about once every two and a half years. The next one won't occur until 2015.

The blue moon is noy only something  that occurs rarely, but it also has a history of portending luck, and having magical qualities. The occurrence of a blue moon is the perfect time to plant the seeds of long-term goals that will blossom in the sun of a future day.  Any goals forwarded and planned beneath the glow of the second full moon of the month are thought to have benefitial  qualities. The potency of the magic of the blue moon is said to be concentrated and passionate.

This is a perfect time to  concentrate on your Feng Shui Inner Work. Focus on you visualizations, affirmations, lists of what you are grateful for and your many blessings. Visualize it, and with the power of the Blue Moon your chances of achieving your goals is greatly enhanced.

Feng Shui Hallways

People don’t usually think of hallways as “rooms.” They just lead from one part of the house to another and are usually treated as “non-rooms”, remaining dark and plain.  Long, thin hallways are like rivers of Chi, forcing us to hurry through them. These can be slowed down by hanging round faceted crystals a few inches from the ceiling every 10 feet or so.  Ideally we want to be pleasantly drawn and enjoy a hallway’s special décor.

Think of where the hallway is aligned to the Bagua, and enhance it with the attributes and colors of that area, choose the lighter shades of the spectrum to enlarge them.  This is a perfect opportunity to create a gallery for displaying paintings, photographs and posters – especially anything with depth that will widen the area. Wider hallways can be made narrower with furniture, bookshelves, carpets and plants.

Lighting in hallways is very important. Bring beauty to the area with track lighting, sconces and interesting lamps.  Treat every inch of your house as a special gift to you and you will reap the results!

My hallway above is enhanced with my father's art and beautiful hand blown glass sconces from the Nourot Glass Studio. www.nourot.com

Garages and Feng Shui

In Feng Shui EVERYTHING COUNTS, including closets and garages.  If you are building your home, keep your garage detached from the main house to ensure good air quality and a more peaceful flow of Chi throughout the house.  Unfortunately, that is not the case for most of us. Garages tend to be built in the front right or left of homes, either in the Knowledge and Self Cultivation, or Helpful People areas. Both of these areas are very important in your life, therefore what your garage looks like is critical to your harmony.

Avoid the tendency to let the garage become a chaotic storeroom. Make it a place you enjoy seeing every day. Leave plenty of room to drive in and out, without worrying about hitting piles of stored items. Install shelves and cabinets for storage, design attractive work areas.

The garage is often the last room you see when you leave and the first when you return. Make is a beautiful and inviting place. Make it a “real room”, hang art and pictures representing its area of the Bagua, paint it an auspicious color, add travel posters,  pictures of family, beautiful lighting and carpeting.

In our garage we have hung a large round faceted crystal in the center, and placed travel pictures and pictures of our spiritual guides. We also created a vision board inside one of the closet doors with pictures and positive affirmations of what we want to have come into our lives.  Outside, in a small flower garden by the garage we planted white flowers surrounding a small angel blowing toward our house. Whenever we feel that our synchronicity is off, and that we keep hitting stumbling blocks, I say, “Honey, it’s time to clean the garage.” We take a few hours to organize, dust, polish, sweep, and state our affirmations once again.  We immediately feel the shift in energy, plus our garage is once again pleasing to look at.